Abandoned Mineral Hot Springs South of Jackpot, Nevada | Wall Art

Still Standing in the Silence of Nevada

This place was the kind of roadside oddity you only stumble upon if you’re willing to wander. South of Jackpot, Nevada—half swallowed by sagebrush and silence—sits this defunct mineral hot springs building, long past its last bath. A flat, concrete box with graffiti-tagged walls, missing windows, and a rusting metal sign frame that no longer spells anything.

But somehow, it still holds presence.

I was out chasing late-day light when I found it—low sun cutting sharp across the front, illuminating every crack in the block walls and every faded letter in “MINERAL HOT SPRINGS.” The structure is plain, almost aggressively utilitarian, but the decay gives it texture and story. It’s the kind of place that makes you wonder about the people who used to stop here. Tourists looking for a soak. Locals meeting for small-town gossip. A few too many beers and a long desert night.

I didn’t frame this shot for nostalgia. I wasn’t trying to romanticize what’s clearly gone. I wanted to document how something as ordinary as a roadside bathhouse can become an icon simply by refusing to vanish. It’s now a monument to nothing in particular—just another desert ghost clinging to the edge of the highway and memory.

There’s humour in the stubbornness of this place. The half-hearted graffiti, the caved-in awning, the absurdity of offering “luxury” in a crumbling shell surrounded by tumbleweed. But there’s also dignity. A quiet dignity that comes from existing on your own terms, long after anyone expected you to.

If you’ve ever found beauty in forgotten things, in roadside ruins, in empty places that still manage to feel lived-in, this one’s for you.

You’ll find more images like this in my Abandoned Photography Collection—each one a meditation on what’s left behind and the stories that linger in the bones.

© Dan Kosmayer, 2022